Analysis

• 1 "The farmers found them - the wasted young"


  -pronoun "them" shows that the war had taken their individuality, no one knows who they are, they're all viewed as just soldiers not as men

  -phrase "wasted young" shows that the soldiers never got to live their lives, the lives were thrown away
• 2 "A chip of bone, the china plate of a shoulder blade"


  -the simile shows that they're fragile, a relique and an antique

  -however china plates aren't actually delicate, they are know for their strength and resistance to chipping

  -this shows irony as the bone and china plate aren't meant to break, but they have because of the war
• 3 "they were told to walk, not run"


  -shows the soldiers were used as bait

  -and made a sacrifice

  -also shows that someone had to die so the others survived

  -also shows that the generals/people in power didn't care who died, all that counted was that they win the war
• 4 "like a wound working on a foreign body to the surface of the skin"


  -this shows that the world wants to heal and move on

  -the simile "wound" personifies the earth as being injured

  -and comparing the soldiers to being "foreign" empathises that they shouldn't be there

  -it also shows how unnatural it is for them to die that young

  -and is also implies that they weren't known

  -also its suggests that the world wants people to know about the soldiers that sacrificed their life for others
• 5 "in boots that outlasted them"


  -this shows that the boots out lived them

  -and that the boots survived longer than the soldiers
• 6 "only now, with this unearthing, slipped from their absent tongues"


  -this shows that discovering the soldiers gives them a voice they lacked

  -and that people can finally hear / know their story

  -they're only now heard
• About the author and context:

  • modern poem, published in 2005
  • the poem is set in July 1916 (WW1)
  • machine guns were planted in the woods for the soldiers
  • the soldiers were told to walk straight towards as bait
  • the Welsh lost 4000 people